{"id":312,"date":"2008-12-15T22:28:32","date_gmt":"2008-12-16T05:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=312"},"modified":"2008-12-15T22:28:32","modified_gmt":"2008-12-16T05:28:32","slug":"the-christmas-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/the-christmas-spirit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Christmas spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a missionary, my mission president had us all take a break from the work during the Christmas season to watch A Christmas Carol<\/em>–any particular version, no matter.\u00a0 When I first came out it was only a couple of months before Christmas, so I was a little bit surprised with this rule–after all, isn’t the missionary work the most important thing to be doing? (I was an extremely hard working missionary, especially in my first year)<\/p>\n

However, after watching the 1984 version of A Christmas Carol<\/em> (the one with George C Scott), I saw exactly why the president felt it was important to take time out to catch the Christmas spirit.\u00a0 Charles Dicken’s story is just so classic, with its stingy, lonely, greedy protagonist who finds his life completely transformed by the values and virtues Christmas was meant to celebrate: charity, love, kindness, thoughtfulness, generosity, empathy, cheerfulness, compassion–a love of God and an understanding that “mankind is [our] business.” When you get right down to it, that’s what Christmas is all about–that’s the culmination of all of our cheery Christmas songs, our beloved holiday traditions, all of the crazy things we do only once a year.\u00a0 It’s great.<\/p>\n

We’ve got a few quirky traditions in my family, but now that my sisters are married, I’m starting to find out that we’re not the only ones!\u00a0 Every year, the Law’s throw a movie marathon with nearly a dozen different film versions of A Christmas Carol<\/em>.\u00a0 I showed up for the last one around 10:15 pm, the one (big surprise!) with George C Scott.\u00a0 Holy cow–nothing could have gotten me more into the Christmas spirit than that!\u00a0 Such a good movie–such good acting–such a magnificent transformation–such a wonderful message.<\/p>\n

Christmas isn’t about material things.\u00a0 With the economic crisis and the financial meltdown hitting us full swing, it’s not hard to feel like this is the year that the Grinch stole Christmas.\u00a0 But really, it’s not about that.\u00a0 It’s about love and giving, about appreciating the people in our lives, and the blessings of God to all of us.\u00a0 It’s about remembering that Jesus Christ gave us an infinite gift, and that no matter our trials and hardships, he will always bring good things to our lives, because he loves us.\u00a0 It’s about remembering that mankind is our business, and that showing our love and doing good, kind things for each other is more important than any of our material comforts and luxuries.\u00a0 Christmas is Christmas whether it comes to the rich or the poor, and because of Christ, all of us are blessed.<\/p>\n

When I’m married and have a family of my own, I want to make it a tradition to watch this movie every year.\u00a0 It’s good.\u00a0 Charles Dicken’s story shows us what Christmas is really about, in a profound and timeless way.\u00a0 What a beautiful story.\u00a0 What a wonderful time of year.\u00a0 What a wonderful gift that God has given us in his son, Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a missionary, my mission president had us all take a break from the work during the Christmas season to watch A Christmas Carol–any particular version, no matter.\u00a0 When I first came out it was only a couple of months before Christmas, so I was a little bit surprised with this rule–after all,… Continue reading The Christmas spirit<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[30,37,599],"class_list":["post-312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-life-decisions","tag-spirituality","tag-thoughts-reflections","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-52","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}